Monday, November 10, 2008

Do you know what the 100 most common words in English are? Tough question, isn't it? We present you today an amusing online game where you can practice and learn the 100 most used words of the language.

This list of words was compiled using the Oxford English Corpus. A corpus is a collection of texts of written (or spoken) language presented in electronic form. These texts are used by the makers of the Oxford English Dictionary, which contains over 2 billion English words.

The way to play the online game is very simple: you have to press the “Start” button and then you have 5 minutes in which to type the words contained in the 100 most used words in English. If you are right, the word will appear in green and then you'll be able to type a new word. If you are wrong, the word won't appear and what you have written will stay until you modify it and write a valid word.

It's very hard to get them all right, but once you see the solution you realize that they truly are words used in almost every (but not all) sentence in English.